“The 80-year relationship between this country and the institutions, headquartered along New York City’s East River, has been one of the most felicitous and at most rewarding in the history of Philippine international relations.”
Some anniversaries of human events can be allowed to go totally or inadequately remembered without unleashing a torrent of criticism or recrimination. But some anniversaries are so historically consequential that they can under no circumstances be allowed to go unobserved or observed inappropriately. One such anniversary is the 80th anniversary of the United Nations (UN).
On a day in mid-1945, the representatives of close to 40 countries and territories signed the Charter of the UN in San Francisco. The Philippines signed the Charter, although at the time it was a commonwealth of the U.S. A very interesting historical footnote is that the Charter also was signed by Ukraine, which then was one of the constituent republics of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), the formal name of the entity often referred to as Russia in that era.
The creation of the UN was the second attempt of the international community to establish global governance in a world that had experienced two world wars within a quarter-century (1914-1939). The first attempt, in 1919, failed when the U.S. Congress voted not to ratify the Covenant of the League of Nations. The success of the second attempt was assured when the principal proponent was the US.
In the course of the negotiations on the structure and powers of the UN, it became increasingly clear (1) that the geopolitics of the post-World War II world would largely consist of a contest between the US and its democratic allies, on the one hand, and a bloc of Eastern European countries dominated by the communist USSR, on the other, and (2) that the US, the USSR and the other remaining world powers were unwilling to accept an all-powerful world government.
Since the post-World War II powers were unprepared to accept an all-powerful UN, a realistic compromise clearly needed to be brought forward. The compromise that was eventually agreed upon – a 15-member Security Council in which each of the five most powerful countries (the US, Russia, the United Kingdom, France and China) would have veto power over major issues, and a general-membership body called the General Assembly – virtually guaranteed that the UN would be unable to act decisively on geopolitical issues in which one of the Big Five countries, which were permanent Security Council members, had a strong interest.
As predicted by most perceptive observers, the first half of the UN’s existence was defined by the Cold War, which lasted from 1946, when communist Russia began to subjugate the Eastern European countries, to 1989, when Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev ordered the removal of the Berlin Wall and effectively dismantled the USSR.
Predictably, the attainment by the UN of eighty years of existence has led perceptive observers to pose the question whether the world body has been successful in its mission of maintaining peace in the world. That question is not difficult to answer. All that needs to be said is that none of the international conflicts that have broken out since 1945 – the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Arab-Israeli wars and the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war – became a world war. Neither is a World War I or a World War II likely to be followed by a World War III as long as the UN, and more specifically the Security Council, is there to keep the world’s great powers talking and trying to reach acceptable compromises with the assistance of the office of the UN Secretary-General.
Of course, peace and geopolitical security have not been the only raison d’être of the organization that has turned 80 this year. Thaose who designed the UN in 1944-1945 made provisions for all of the world’s other non-security concerns. The creation of the specialized economic institutions – the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank (WB), and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, later renamed the World Trade Organization (GATT/WTO) – served to ensure that the economic frictions that led to the world wars would not be allowed to again place world peace at risk.
And of course, there is the myriad of UN agencies that were created to take care of the post-World War II world’s social, health and education needs – agencies that have kept the world’s 8 billion people healthy, educated, socially connected and culturally progressive. Truly, if any institution deserved the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, it would be the UN.
The 80-year relationship between this country and the institutions, headquartered along New York City’s East River, has been one of the most felicitous and at most rewarding in the history of Philippine international relations. This country’s participation in many of the UN peacekeeping forces around the world and the substantial presence of Filipino professionals in the UN bureaucracy attests, partly, to that.
Best of luck to the UN as it embarks upon the second 80 years of its history.
(llagasjessa@yahoo.com)
